Since the weather might even betray a bit of Summer, I thought I’d open a tawny.

Colour is red in the middle, fading to reddish amber as I tilt the glass and then a clear edge. On the nose, quite a lot of spices with coriander predominating. Then something similar to a strawberries and cream boiled sweet. In the mouth initially a bit of a sugar with some primary fruit. Again it reminds me of those artificial sweet flavours, but in this case cherry drops. Then the flavour mellows and there is a slightly hard bitter edge. Finally that fades away and there is a lovely nutty aftertaste, with great complexity and length which easily matures for a minute or longer. There is perhaps a bit too much sugar to make these pleasing for serious quaffing (it quickly degenerates to sticky mess), but for a few glasses it is very nice indeed.

The bottle is also, pretty much perfect. Port producers please note: green glass, stenciled text and embossing is almost certainly the way forward: